Like any dancer --- except for the wheelchair

Acworth resident didn't let inability to walk keep him from being a performer

Tucker McQueen - Staff
Thursday, March 21, 2002

A director at a Texas women's college wasn't surprised when a young man applied to be a dance major. The school had just opened its undergraduate program to both sexes. But she was amazed that he rolled into the department to register in a wheelchair.

Penny Hanstein, director of the dance program at Texas Woman's University in Denton, said Alex Spitzer broke barriers on many fronts when he enrolled seven years ago. With strict laws on serving the disabled, she said it wasn't a question of whether the school would accept him. But the department did have to rethink its curriculum to work with a dance major who couldn't walk.

Spitzer, now an Acworth resident, was born with a muscle and joint disorder that makes his hands retract and his legs unable to support him. He determined that he wanted to be a dancer after reading about a disabled dancer when he was a senior in high school.

"In dance, you create to the best of your abilities, and every dancer has a different ability," he said. "It's all about hearing the music and reacting to your soul. And no dancer reacts the same --- including me."

Hanstein said Spitzer changed her perception of who can be a dancer. She said his physical differences were so dramatic, it took time to determine what his range of motion could be and how to help him find his creative voice. She said she pushed Spitzer as much as other students. He remembers lining up in the studio with his classmates to learn the positions and the movements of ballet and modern dance. He said after a while, no one seemed to notice that he was in a wheelchair.

"I knew he would make it by virtue of his coming here," Hanstein said. "This is a tough profession for anyone. But I knew he could survive because he had enormous passion."

Spitzer earned his degree in dance and has performed in New York and Los Angeles. He makes his Atlanta debut next month. He has started a dance company with five able-bodied dancers and choreographs for dancers with and without disabilities. He rehearses at the Ruth Mitchell studio in Marietta and also with the Duende Dance Theater in Atlanta. And he will dance April 12-13 with the Spitzer Dance Company at the Beam in Grant Park.

This weekend, he and dance partner Heather Abernathy will perform "Firedance," a dramatic pas de deux, in a Ruth Mitchell Dance Theatre production at the Cobb Civic Center's Jennie Anderson Theatre.

Onstage, he has his own dance technique, moving his head and shoulders to the music and wheeling his chair in synchronization with his partner. He said the key is making the chair a part of the dance, an extension of his body.

"I've had hardships finding a fit in an able-bodied world, but I am showing everyone what a disabled person can do," Spitzer said. "When I am onstage, I think of myself like any other dancer."

After his family moved to Cobb two years ago, he decided to do some sightseeing. He explains that Texas can be flat, and he was excited about viewing the world from the top of a mountain. He drove in his customized van to Clingman's Dome, the highest peak in Tennessee, and took the paved path to the top in his motorized wheelchair. He didn't realize how steep the slope would be on the way down, but was energized by the accomplishment.

"That really pushed my boundaries," Spitzer said. "People on the trail told me I was taking the easy way in my chair. I am a person who will try anything, but I wanted to say this is definitely not the easy way."

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